LOCAL ANGLES: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT AND JOHN WAYNE GACY

There are plenty of reasons to be repulsed by John Wayne Gacy, the least of which is the irony represented by his name.

It stands as wry coincidence now that his parents supplied him the names of America's foremost cinematic hero, a man's man, one who was often on a short side of the odds and still prevailed.

Only the most unusual of circumstances now will allow John Wayne Gacy to prevail in his current fight, which is for his life.

The state of Illinois wants to execute him Tuesday for murdering 33 men and boys between 1972 and 1978. Most of the bodies were found buried in a crawl space beneath Gacy's house near Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

Of those in America who have attained the dubious celebrity that comes with the label "serial killer," Gacy ranks with the most notorious. Another midwesterner, Jeffrey Daumer, might eclipse Gacy's disrepute, if only for his more recent clippings and table manners.

In prison, writes Alec Wilkinson in a recent New Yorker piece, guards refer to Gacy as John Wayne ... that is, when they're not calling him J.W. or Chester Molester.

Since his conviction in 1980, John Wayne Gacy has been on death row and working the legal system like he worked the shovel in that crawl space, quietly and efficiently.

So unobtrusive have been his actions and existence that many here are surprised to learn Gacy resides in a cell not more than 50 miles from this community, at Menard Correctional Center near Chester, Ill., practically a neighbor.

That he has escaped the executioner this long is testament not only to his resourcefulness but the forbearance of the legal system.

This certainly must get the goat of many Americans who feel criminals, particularly those who are the most violent, are having their way in this nation.

It doesn't help when a guy like Billy Isaacs gets out of prison, like he did last week, just 21 years after earning 60 years in sentences for participating in the murders of seven people in Maryland and Georgia.

Seven people were laid to rest because of his actions, and here is Billy Isaacs, turned loose at age 36, with half a lifetime of freedom to enjoy.

It's maddening.

It's little wonder that many people in this nation, frustrated by what seems unchecked lawlessness, gladly endorsed the quaint Singapore custom of taking a switch to lawbreakers. When an American teen, Michael Fay, got a bare-butt lashing Thursday for vandalizing automobiles in that nation, many of his countrymen felt he had the licks coming. And they wouldn't mind putting a few others on the business end of a rattan rod.

For each new incident of tire imprints trailed across your yard or stereo equipment lifted from your car or sweaters stolen from your store, American anger grows. The crime and punishment relationship stumbles inexorably toward seeming dissolution.

With that said, however, I still question the worth to society of pumping John Wayne Gacy full of poison Tuesday.

Admittedly, this sentiment is a remnant of my rapidly eroding bleeding-heart days. I don't buy for a minute Gacy's claim of being the "34th victim" in these murders. By the same accounting, I'm not interested in his blood being on my hands.

You say he's just taking up space on the planet. There are a lot of people -- gainfully employed, church-going folks, but ne'er-do-wells all the same -- I could say the same thing about.

You say it costs the taxpayer too much to keep him around. It costs a lot, to be sure, but since when did the taxpayer get so particular about wasteful spending? If the money wasn't spent on preserving the life of a human being, albeit a rotten human being, it would merely go toward constructing a pork-barrel airport in the hometown of an uncurbed legislator.

What do we gain? Justice, you say. Well, yes, but justice became a diminishing possibility with each year Gacy was able to string out his appeals. Besides, he killed 33 people. The only way to exact true justice is execute him 33 times.

Revenge? Now there's a worthy motive for a nation whose aims have traditionally been loftier.

Can we hold up execution as a source of deterrence? After a period in which capital punishment was prohibited, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed for its rebirth in 1976.

In 1976, the nation's murder rate was 8.8 per 100,000 people. With capital punishment as the law of the land, the U.S. murder rate in 1992 was 9.3 per 100,000 people. In Gacy's hometown, there were 851 murders last year ... some deterrence.

In these days when people want authorities to lock up criminals and throw away the key, I'm in the majority. And while I want the John Wayne Gacys of the world locked up, I share no personal satisfaction or sense of justice in making him lifeless on a gurney.

He may be more valuable to society as an artifact of evil than as a corpse.

If you say it will cost more money to keep such people breathing, as a taxpayer I say I'm asked to pay for worse things.

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.